Saara Turunen’s play The Phantom of Normality (2016) explores the everyday life of Finnish family life. It presents an ironic take on family traditions, relationships, communication habits, secret desires, small and clichéd interpersonal issues and conflicts. In the center of the play are frigidity and short-sightedness toward one another. The creative team revises the concept of normality. Isn’t normality just a pretty illusion?
Director Antanas Obcarskas: “Saara Tununen text quietly and disheartenedly buries the normal family and the last sincere person, while in the performance we find ourselves in the near future and bury the last family of bees. Human families are long gone from the surface of the earth. But could anything more normal than bees exist in nature? I cannot think of anything more ordinary. Unfortunately, I hardly resemble them, as the general political correctness prevents me from doing as little as stinging. The bees, despite being a perfectly independent, yet fragile organism, are going extinct. Family is a strong word but is as a concept becoming an increasingly rare occurrence in my environment. In the future presented in our performance, families are completely extinct and all is left of them is a bitter set of memories, recorded by the author of the play… I must ask: In the future, will one mock our rushed and resolute dissociation from each other? Why do we feel the urgency to return to our home and lock the door to be with only ourselves?”
Director: Antanas Obcarskas
Set Designer: Oscar Dempsey
Costume designer: Juozas Valenta
Cast: Ella Lymi, Carlos Orjuela, Jasir Osman, Nicklas Pohjola, Milla Tissari
Lighting designer: Teemu Nurmelin
Design by Vytautas Jašauskas
Technical assistant in Lithuania: Dominykas Grinius
Tutors: directors Kristian Smeds and Yana Ross
Producers: Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, State Youth Theatre
Partner: Theatre Academy of Uniarts Helsinki
